Sarah Jenny Blevis
Sarah Jenny Bleviss is a community organizer, new media producer, and visual artist. As an activist for sex workers’ rights, she co-founded SWOP-NYC, a chapter of a national grassroots SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project) network dedicated to improving the lives of current and former sex workers on and off of the job. Ms. Bleviss earned a B.A. from Hampshire College in visual art and cultural studies in 2005 and and a M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2011 where she investigated the ways technology can be used for HIV prevention and to improve the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS. She makes interactive and mixed media storytelling works honoring and memorializing the lives and experiences of sex workers around the globe.
Michelle Temple
Michelle Temple graduated with a Bachelor's in Fine Art in 2004 from Prescott College, Prescott, AZ. Michelle recently received a Master's in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. While at ITP, she was influenced by circuitry and sound engineering, which has turned her into a speaker builder. Now Michelle uses her directive speakers to create unique psycho acoustic experiences in her series of small enclosures she calls "Useless Houses". Michelle has also worked professionally as a transcriptionist for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in NYC for 5 years. More importantly, her recent graduate experience led her to collaborate with Sarah Jenny.
In Memoriam
Wood, thread, acrylic paint, electronics
Sex worker is inherently a queer identity in that it falls outside of heteronormative, reproductive intercourse. Many sex workers are on the LGBTQ spectrum and through choice, circumstance, and at times coercion have engaged in trading sex for money, housing, hormones, drugs, and other survival needs. This piece is a way for me to personally work through that fear, pain, and loss of those in my community as well as to remind our larger queer community about the importance of allying with sex workers. Poor public health policy, laws, policing, violence and stigma impact most all queer people, sex workers included. Through this work and others in this series, I am to commemorate the lives and spirits of these individuals who were folks' family and friends and not simply defined in terms of their work. The names memorialized in this piece were collected for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, held each year on December 17th. This work is a call to action for the larger queer community to recognize and include sex workers in queer history.
sarahjenny.org
swop-nyc.org
opentranscript.net/?page_id=17
itp.nyu.edu/~mt1446/directionalSpeaker/blog/?page_id=81
sarahjenny.org
swop-nyc.org
opentranscript.net/?page_id=17
itp.nyu.edu/~mt1446/directionalSpeaker/blog/?page_id=81
